Electronic Messaging
The present invention relates to the use of electronic messages to transfer data. More particularly, it involves the transfer of data in electronic messages with no loss of semantic data and/or other metadata or other meaning associated with the data, with application to the transfer of medical data.
Electronic messaging comprises the use of computerized services to send and receive electronic data, which may comprise, e.g., text, audio, video, and/or other electronic data.
Many forms of electronic messaging are well known, e.g., electronic mail (or email) and instant messaging. For example, depending on the system, email may comprise a system for sending asynchronous messages to one or more users. Again depending on the system, an email message may comprise a title or subject, a body that primarily comprises text, and/or one or more attachments, which may comprise computer files and/or other electronic data.
According to the prior art, an attachment to an electronic message is often a computer file. Attaching the file comprises including a representation of the entire contents of the file and descriptive data in the representation of the electronic message. When the electronic message is received, the attachment may be extracted and possibly saved as a new file by the recipient.
In some instances, a sender may itself be a computer program or system. For example, a computer may be configured to periodically transfer a log as an electronic message. Such a message may be composed and transferred without human intervention.
The transport and representation of electronic messages as email across the Internet 7 are well known and described in publicly-available Internet standards, which are called Requests for Comment (“RFCs”). Relevant RFCs comprise RFC2822 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt), RFC2045 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2045.txt), RFC2046 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2046.txt), RFC2047 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2047.txt), RFC2048 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2048.txt), and RFC2049 (available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2049.txt), among others. Other ways to represent and/or transport electronic messages are also well known. As described in these RFCs, the representation of an electronic message comprises representations of the message and the content of any attachments.
Electronic Health Records
A number of things have driven the growth in all aspects of the health care industry of computerized systems providing Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). (The term “EHR system” is used herein to refer to any computerized system that may store, maintain, and/or provide EHRs. This term may have other significance in other contexts.) For example, governmental regulation continues to move towards impelling the adoption of EHR systems. In addition, EHR systems reduce the chances of loss of patient records and mistakes in data entry and make delivery of health care more efficient, thereby offering the prospects of improving patient care while lowering its cost. Further, EHR systems may help ease the burden of paperwork that now afflicts the delivery of health care.
An EHR system may record and aggregate any type of data associated with health care, including, e.g., data about patients, including, e.g., their names, addresses, insurance coverage and/or other financial arrangements, health conditions, allergies, procedures undergone, and/or tests performed. Other recorded data may relate to, among other things, health care providers, payers, pharmacies, and/or employers.
Electronic data of any sort is often associated with other data that describes it, provides context for it, associates it with other data, and/or otherwise signifies the meaning, significance, and/or one or more other attributes of the electronic data. This accompanying data is often called “metadata.”
For example, in the medical field, an application may display the results of a blood test for cholesterol levels. The display may include data such as the levels of total cholesterol, HDLs, and LDLs, among other data. Some or all of this data may be associated with further data, such as the date of the test, the location where the blood sample was drawn, the identity of the laboratory (“lab”) that analyzed the sample, the identity of the patient, and the identity of the practitioner who ordered the test, and this further data can be considered metadata. The appropriate characterization of data sometimes depends on the ways in which it is treated in computerized files, applications, and/or systems.
A health care provider may wish to transfer data, contained in an EHR system, about one or more patients, to other providers, for example, in connection with a medical consultation.